Hall of Screams
by PegasusAcc
Summary: [Midii UnexTrowa Barton] A mysterious meeting in a prison leaves two people with anything but the closure they deserve


Hall of Screams

By: PegasusAcc

The cell was claustrophobically small; even the years worth of grime and filth that covered the walls had a hard time finding room to grow.  There were no shadows retreating along the cobweb-ridden corners, because shadows required light.  The entire corridor was an endless inky blackness in which people often disappeared down and never returned.

But in recent years, no one had bothered to tread along the stone-flagged pathway, pray the occasional shuffle of guards, whose footfalls echoed like cannon shots in the usual deathly silence; but never anyone of importance.  Food came and went as those willing to deliver it pleased, usually stretching once every three days.  It was enough to keep the prisoners alive, but only just so.  And as a result, all resistance was drained from their body.  The darkness carved away at their sanity, leaving only an empty rotting shell of nothing.

It was called the Hall of Screams, and simply for the lack of such.  Only the deadliest of enemies made it to this god-forsaken prison.  It was a place to send those that people wanted to forget, a place to send those who people wished to just have fade away from existence.

A small figure sat shivering in the corner of the cell.  Humidity clung to the jutting features of her malnourished body, yet chills raced along her skin.  Her once golden and flowing hair now fell around her face in a tangled web of dirt-encrusted tendrils.  Silent tears strained down her cheeks, splashing onto the grungy cement floor and disappearing into the small, concealed rifts that had formed over time.  Dirt caked the palms of her hands, which now clutched the worn sleeves of her jacket.

Midii Une had been in such a state for nearly six months.  Each day, or what she perceived as day, her eyes would open, though she could never decipher if she was awake or still sleeping through a wicked nightmare.  Silence had become her best friend.  She felt sick with each twitch she took.  Most of her body had given way to numbness, but there was always the occasional sting as she attempted to move.

However, the pain of breathing had lessened considerably.  At first her endeavours were fruitless; merely short aching gasps through broken ribs.  Yet as time crawled on, she became accustomed to the feeling and thought next to nothing of it.

She let her hand fall to the floor, brushing against the cool steel of the prison bars, jumping as a many-legged something slithered across the back of her hand.  She grimaced, but shifted to lean her back against the solid wall.  Her head fell sideways, resting groggily on the metal.  

She listened intently.  Someone three blocks down was rocking themselves back and forth, muttering a silent prayer.  The person across the way and diagonal to her was sleeping restlessly.  She heard the scrape of bare feet against stone, evidence of fitful dreams.  Everyone remaining was either sleeping somewhat peacefully or listening to the silent, synchronized pattern of breathing just as she. 

Then she heard a sound she'd nearly succeeded in forcing herself to forget.  It was the heavy tread of metal-toed combat boots scraping along stone, followed in suit by the softer patter of a prisoner's step.  She strained her ears, noticing the sound as it grew louder with each ill-waited moment.  She held her breath: they were right behind the door she knew existed at the end of the corridor.

There was the soft swish as the door opened.  Immediately protests erupted from unused throats.  Cries for help emerged as gargles and harsh barks as a retina-burning light swathed the hallway.  Midii flung her arm to shield her eyes as they began to water, ignoring the shooting pains ricocheting through her bones.  The cacophony began to crescendo as two hefty guards shoved past the hands outstretched between the bars, making their way towards her miniscule cell.

Her eardrums felt as if they would burst.  She went to stick her index fingers into her ears in order to muffle the noise, but the light still stung her eyes.  Blinking, she made out the silhouette of a young man as they shoved him into the cell next to her own.

Then in the next instant they were gone.  The noise had finally subdued, but the rhythmic breathing pattern had been disrupted.  Midii heard gasps from the end of the darkness, and hiccups as someone attempted to restrain their tears from the opposite direction.  But behind her she listened to the long and steady breaths of the newest victim.  Her brow furrowed slightly as she pressed her ear against the wall.  No one had ever entered and been able to breath so calmly afterwards.  In most circumstances the captive would have broken down crying, praying or cursing God for such an ill turn of fate.  It's what she had done.  It's what everyone had done.

"So this is the fabled Hall of Screams, is it?"

She was a bit taken aback.  It took her a moment to register what it was that he had even said; it had been ages since she had heard any coherent conversation that she had almost forgotten what the spoken word sounded like.  Still, she remained silent, unsure of how to answer.  His voice wasn't coarse or irregular in pitch, but instead it was calm and steady, deep, rich, reassuring and most comforting of all, it was warm.

"I know you're there. I saw you when I came in."

Midii shuffled anxiously, her heart beating faster in her battered ribcage and her breathing short and ragged.

"Why don't you answer me?" he whispered, barely audibly.  Midii slid back against the wall.  She wet her cracked lips, opening her mouth as if to answer, than thinking better and shutting it again.  

"Are you afraid?"

Her fingers began to quiver as she felt beads of sweat slide down her neck.  She wet her lips a final time.

"N-No," she finally replied, her throat splitting as she did so.  Her voice was unfamiliar, even to herself.  It was cracked and unused, faltering and stuttering.

"But you were shaking."

Midii clasped her shoulders tightly.  "S-So.  I'm always shaking," she whined, attempting to inject even an ounce of stability to her fluctuating vocals.  "It's…It's j-just what happens after awhile."  She extended her feet, pressing her back against one wall and her feet against the other in an attempt to stop the quivering in her body.   She heard a faint ruffling and the soft hum of understanding.

"You never answered my first question.  So this is the fabled Hall of Screams?"  Midii took a deep, pain-racked breath.  "It's not so bad."  She let the air out slowly.

"What would you know?  You've only just arrived.  Wait until you're left alone to your own solitude.  You begin to steadily go mad, the darkness s-slowly eating away at who you are and leaving only the fleeting memories of who it was you used to be."  

She heard quiet shuffling.  "I don't mind solitude.  Sometimes it's the best thing I have.  If you're alone, no one and nothing can betray you."

Midii snorted softly.  "Don't be a fool.  Even your own silence can betray you."  There was a pause, and Midii began to close her eyes.  She suddenly felt so tired.

"You seem to speak from experience."  Midii pried her eyes open, lifted her hand a few inches in front of her face and attempted to see an outline that wasn't there.

"In my line of business, or former line of business I suppose, you always run the risk of betrayal.  It's betray or be betrayed.  There is no medium."

"So you've never trusted anyone before?"

She thought for a moment, her mind reeling with the few remaining memories the darkness had yet to lay claim to.  She felt her head begin to pound with strain, her mind's images slowly gaining a crimson tint.

"No."

Midii turned, ignoring the slight jolt of pain.  "I don't need the worry of trust.  All that trust can lead you to are emotions.  Emotions are weakness, and enemies love to exploit your weaknesses."

She heard his stifled laughter.  "You remind me of myself, or myself a long time ago anyway."  Midii groaned, sleep pulling on her cramped muscles.  She shoved her back against the flat surface of the wall again, resting her hand on the outside the cell's bars.  "I trusted someone once."

"And?" Midii coughed, tasting a metallic flavor wash across her tongue.  She heard his long sigh.

"She betrayed me."  Midii smiled, feeling the idle muscles in her cheeks stretch for the first time in months.

"I told you."  She let her lids drop.  All she wanted to do was sleep.  The pain in her body was increasing with each word she spoke.  At least in nightmares she could escape the hell in which she was confined to in reality, if only for a brief moment.  She felt a soft something brush against the back of her hand.  She nearly jumped, before realizing what it was.

She hadn't had any physical contact since the day they threw her in this place to rot.  The sensation of skin against skin woke something within her; something she'd expected had died a long time ago.  His hand remained atop of hers, his thumb caressing her skin.

"What's your name?"

Midii shuddered, running her shaking fingers through her hair as far as possible before they became tangled.  "Does it matter?" she spoke after a moment, her voice now steady.  "The person I was died a long time ago."  But she could not suppress her natural curiosity.  "Why?"

He didn't answer, but his caressing continued.  Midii felt tears begin to roll past her chin.  She was so tired, but she didn't want him to stop talking.  His voice was like a soft lullaby to which she was slowly beginning to remember the words.  If he stopped now, she would forever be left in the dark, cursed to live with only half the song replaying in her fading mind.

"I trusted someone once," he repeated, his voice like a softly crooned chorus.  "And she betrayed me.  But I have never once regretted having met her.  She changed my life forever.  Her betrayal hurt, more than any physical wound that could ever have been inflicted.  But," he paused, grasping Midii's fingers in his own.  "But the pain proved to me that I was human.  Scars heal over time, but you can never heal the regret of not living the unlived life."

Her throat burned.  She knew she shouldn't say anything else, but her thirst had not been quenched.  "The unlived life?"  She could feel his heartbeat through his palm.

"Knowing that you've been alive, yet sheltered in your own world to protect yourself from the hurt of betrayal is a far worse pain than that of any man made prison."

Midii gasped, her chest erupting and throbbing.  All her forgotten memories came flooding back into her.  She…she remembered.

"I, I don't want to live in the darkness forever," she finally sobbed silently, moist trails running across her skin.  "But I've lost all hope of ever escaping this confinement."

He began stroking her hand again.  "I've learned to trust since that day.  My partners are going to free us.  Everyone here.  You'll be able to begin living your life again."

Midii sobbed harder, her chest heaving through the excruciating pain.  "You cannot save me from myself."

His touch stopped, and he listened for a moment to her broken cries.  He reached across the bars, fumbling to feel her face.

She heard his hand graze the metal bars of her cell.  She groped around the darkness, feeling for his fingers and leaning her tear-stained face into his palm.

"Please don't cry," he whispered, holding her head lightly.  Midii pressed her face into his hand.

"I never asked you to save me.  I'm not going to thank you…" As soon as the words had left her lips, she didn't know why she'd said them at all.  She wanted nothing more than to be saved.

"Don't worry," he whispered again, attempting to wipe away the moisture from her face.  "I've never expected it."

Midii sighed, for once feeling at peace.  The hallway had quieted down again, though there was a familiar scuffle on the other side of the door.  She felt the light again, rather than saw it, as the door swung open and cannon footsteps lumbered toward her.

She felt his hand leave her face, and was only distantly aware of the forceful grip around her shoulders.

"Let's go," demanded two gruff, rasping voices.  They yanked her to her feet, causing her to cough blood onto the cement floor.  She felt metal clasp around her wrists.  They shoved her slowly down the corridor, past outstretched hands and voices used for a second time that day.

"What's your name?" she heard him ask again.

"I told you, I have no name," she repeated, not caring as her knees began to feel weak.  "But what's yours?"  She attempted to turn, looking over the shoulders of her burly guards, and she saw him for the first time.  His hair swept over his face, concealing one of his jade eyes that shone so expressively.  She watched as a solitary tear streaked down his cheek and soaked into the fabric of his Preventer jacket.

"My name is Trowa.  Trowa Barton."

Midii sighed, smiling.  "Trowa Barton…" She stumbled slightly as the guards shoved her forward.  "I wish I could have met someone like you earlier in my life, Trowa Barton."  Then the door slammed, the light disappearing as she did.

Trowa pulled his knees to his chest, resting his forehead gently.  He ran his finger along the moist trail on his skin.  "So do I, Midii," he confessed to the darkness.  He wanted to do so much more than sit there and cry…cry and wait.  But his screams of agony remained bottled within, adding only to the silence of the Hall of Screams.  "So do I." 


End file.
